This year I didn't go to dreamforce, but Last year I experience this big Party. I attended live presentation by Mark Benioff. It was great. This year, I opted out but I watched keynote on Youtube. It was great show putup by Mark. I was quite impressed by use cases they presented.
Have a look at this must watch video, You can take it as a Benchmark about how to create an intro video of new product. Also I was impressed by the intro video they have prepared for Salesfoce1.
The Salesforce1 Platform brings together Force.com, Heroku, and ExactTarget into one family of cloud services — all built API first — to help deliver apps that connect products, users, and next generation experiences. Designed for scale and speed, it provides a fast way to build apps with open APIs, back-end services, integration tools, starter templates as well as powerful developer environments; there’s no limit to what you can build. - Salesforce Developer Website
Its Amazing!
I took some time to understand the new look Marketing Cloud which is now rebranded as ExactTarget Marketing Cloud or ExactTarget Fuel. For a newbee or first look, Marketing cloud will overwhelm you and additionally all the content salesforce has put up on their website won't give much details. Additionally some links are broken yet.
Here I will try to explain Marketing cloud from layman perspective. Marketing cloud has been built up by several acquisitions SF did in last two years. They are building this cloud offering using acquired companies as Lego blocks.
ExactTarget - Email, Mobile, SMS
Salesforce acquired ExactTarget for $2.5 billion just 4 months back and It has taken centerstage for SF marketing cloud. And It has to as it was already boasting of 6000 of Enterprise customers including big names like Coca cola, Gap, Nike.
The dramatic increase in consumer and business use of social networks, mobile devices and new digital technologies is causing a revolution in marketing, as budgets previously spent on traditional media are now moving to digital campaigns. Gartner estimates that by 2015 consumer technology companies will have switched one-third of their traditional marketing budgets to digital*, and CMOs will outspend CIOs on information technology by 2017**. - SF Press Release,SAN FRANCISCO—July 12, 2013As this integration has happened just 4 months prior to big announcements, It doesn't come as a something which follows salesforce platform philosophy and have tools like Apex and Visualforce providing customisations to it. but As Salesforce is projecting its platform as more of Data API oriented more of moving on from SAAS to be a BAAS player.
ExactTarget basically provide you more richer Email, SMS/Mobile Marketing. Its going to plug a biggest hole in the Salesforce platform.
Buddy Media - Social media Marketing & Analytics
Mark has a knack of identifying or aligning opportunities, He seems to have clearly able to relate growing Social clout with enterprise world. Instead of boasting about its own existing offering, he seems to have gone ahead bravely to adopt futuristic things. Buddy Media acquisition decision was one of them. Salesforce.com closed on its $745 million acquisition of Buddy Media in August 2012. It also occupied centre stage along with Radian 6 in Dreamforce 2012.
Buddy media basically provide business to manage social media marketing and Analytics.
Radian 6 - Listen, Monitor, Engage
Salesforce.com acquired Radian6 in 2010 for $326 million, it also added social connections on main platform. but It didn't make any impact as such in a broader way. But with all the dots connecting, It will definitely a great value add to salesforce platform.
Businesses can use radian6 to listen, monitor and engage on social media. Its kind of beautiful software which enables Marketing team and Primarily Customer Support and service team to use social media effectively.
Social.com - Advertizing on FB and Twitter
Social channel is becoming quite popular for digital advertising as it gives you access to identities and profiles for better targeting. Same thing is not possible in google search or google adwords.
Facebook and Twitter are strengthening their Advertizing offerings, It was good time for Salesforce to jump into it. As Marketing team have to spend budgets on Social Advertizing and if they can do it under same umbrella it would be quite good. They have launched it in April 2013. Its not something which they have acquired.
IGoDigital - Personalized Product Suggestions, Data and Predictive Analytics
IGoDigital was acquisition was not Salesforce brainchild, ExactTarget with keeping in mind Marketing needs of Ecommerce players acquired I Go Digital. With Tremendous growth in Ecommerce, lots of small merchants coming on to internet to do business. ExactTarget acquired IGoDigital, Its personalization technology, the expanded predictive analytics capabilities will enable marketers to leverage predictive product recommendations and content to create personalized experiences throughout the customer lifecycle.
Pardot - Marketing Automation
Messaging is a major part of Marketing. Messaging need to be done on various actions and through various channels. It can't be done manually in efficient way. Again Pardot acquisition is not Salesforce action, ExactTarget acquired it in Oct 2012. Pardot is one of the fewer companies which are providing Marketing Automation for almost all the channels, reducing manual interventions and letting marketing teams to think more on Business alignments and Creations.
-- FROM SALESFORCE Website -- START >
ExactTarget Fuel powers multi-channel marketing programs for many of the world’s top brands. Fuel is an integrated collection of platform technologies that is open to third-party development, enabling you to build upon, extend, and integrate with ExactTarget’s digital marketing products.
Fuel includes:
APIs: Automate email campaigns, seamlessly integrate marketing, analytics, and other business software, and build Marketing Cloud applications.
SDKs: Use native platform and language constructs to integrate with ExactTarget including Java, .NET, PHP, Python and Ruby.
Fuel UX: Build apps the deeply integrate with the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud using familiar JavaScript technologies.
Fuel Cloud Editor: Easily embed world-class content creation in your Marketing Cloud or stand-alone app.
< END -- FROM SALESFORCE Website --
Now with all the lego blocks available, They have put together a marketing cloud but as of now customers can't buy all these in a single pack. As of Now, What I see from individual product websites, they have listed their pricing separately. With ExactTarget just 4 months into Salesforce Cloud, It will take Product Managers enough time to offer all these product under single umbrella with competitive pricing. Otherwise they will stay separated. I also guess as almost all the products are sharing social component, they would be having repetition of features. Salesforce PM team will need to put significant effort in packaging.
Read my Other Post about Salesforce1 Platform - http://sandipmore.blogspot.in/2013/11/dont-build-mobile-app-for-your-business.html
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